About the Author

Gianrico Carofiglio is one of Italy's bestselling authors. He was
previously a member of the Italian Senate and before that, an
anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia. He
has been involved with trials concerning corruption, organised
crime and the traffic in human beings. He has written a number of
highly acclaimed crime novels and other literary fiction.

Reviews

Praise for Carofiglio:

"The author occupies a niche similar to Erle Stanley Gardner and
John Grisham. The genre is flourishing and Carofiglio has endowed
his hero with a discriminating taste for good food, but none of
their relish for brutality. Violence is kept at arm's length."
Times Literary Supplement
"As exacting and contemplative as any crime writer I can think of.
Yet when the Italian defence lawyer isn't doing something, he is
thinking, and what goes on in his doubt-stuffed head is always
captivating. "Washington Post
"Hard-boiled and sun-dried in equal parts. Where Philip Marlowe
would be knocking back bourbon and listening to the snap of fist on
the jaw, Guerrieri prefers Sicilian wine and Leonard Cohen. "
Financial Times
"The role of Guerrieri is to take on impossible cases that have
little chance of success. His efforts to prove his client's
innocence bring him into dangerous conflict with Mafia interests.
Everything a legal thriller should be." The Times
"Written with brio, humour and skill. Guerrieri is a lawyer who
struggles with his own demons as much as with his stressful
caseload. It sometimes feels as though he's the only honest lawyer
in Bari." Daily Mail

KIRKUS: Carofiglio's engaging main character. Fenoglio is a
sensitive, polished figure who has managed to keep his idealism
intact in a career meant to break it; he is as comfortable
philosophizing as he is citing the public safety code. When he
recalls a joke about a drunkard searching for his keys under a
streetlight rather than in the dark street where he lost them, he
realizes his search is failing for the same reason: "We look where
it's light, even though that's exactly how not to solve the
problem. Solving this case, Carofiglio shows us, requires a leap
into the darkness.

PW: This is sure to win Carofiglio, a former prosecutor who
specialized in organized crime, a wider U.S. audience.CrimeTime:
Who better to tell you how the Mafia works than the man who in real
life was an Italian prosecutor and advisor to the government's
anti-Mafia

Committee? This at times meditative book teaches us much about
gangland's childish rituals and Italian police procedure but still
racks up some tension before its realistic conclusion. It's a book
for adult readers, about gangsters who are little more than
viscously bad boys.